"James E. Gunn - Kampus" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gunn James E)

bit like a slave market, and nothing at all like a university. It was invented as an excuse for doing in public
what everyone else does in private. The students call it honesty, and the professors call it lewd, but what
it really is is an affirmation of the students' devotion to sensuality and their disinterest in education. In
other words, it is a completely appropriate beginning to a new academic year.

тАФTHE PROFESSOR'S NOTEBOOK

Gavin dopedrifted through the sensemadness of Karnival like a molecule enslaved in one of the Savages'
amplifiers, vibrating with the chords of the bass guitar, beaten from side to side by the hammering drum,
darting with the stringplay of the lead, in unrelenting, irrelevant motionтАжThrob, boom-boom, tinkle,
twinkle, plinkтАж

Someone, somewhere, had slipped him a hallucinogen. In the hideyholes of his mind he tried to
remember what he had eaten or drunk or smoked, tried to decide what friend had meant him well or
what enemy had wanted him neutralized, and for what purpose, on this most important day of the school
year. But, care-released, he floated above that central core of concern, like a red balloon over a lava pit,
and reveled in his liberation from the demon that sat on his shoulders, riding him this way and that, while
its metalstudded whip lashed down through skin and muscle and heart and liver to his guts.

He gave himself to the slugbeat and the kaleidoscene with an emotion that resembled joy. The familiar
arena of the fieldhouse was strange tonight, the roofreach fading into night, the balcony glittering with
flickerlights and swirlpools, the air thick with burncense and leafsmoke and mansweat. Some of the
effect, he was sure, was sensetwist, the strange swim and shimmer of passing students, their aura, their
iridescence, but how to explain the grotesqueries of their faces and the way their proteanskins melted into
motley?

And then Gavin remembered: Tonight was Karnival, with masks and costumes, Truce, the suspensions of
all conflicts, freedom from fear and license to do those things which position or timidity or reason
ordinarily prevented.

"Hi, Gavin," said one mask as it loomed out of colored mists, and a firm hand to his shoulder staggered
him before the mask disappeared.

"Hello, Gavin," said another mask, more lightly, more meaningfully, and lips like burning snakes writhed
upon his lips before the crowd swept from him the figure that his hands yearned toward.

He held his hands in front of his face, looking at them as if they were strange and new, while the crowd
buffeted him, and then blindlifted them to his cheeks. His cheeks felt stiff but not like a mask, more like
skin rigid from shock or rigor mortis.

He did not feel in shock, only disoriented by the hallucinogenic, deafened by the screamsound, battered
by the slugbeat that seemed to originate in his bowels and radiate outward to jar the mobscene and rattle
the roofreach.

He looked up and saw the Savages, naked save for loincloths, surrounded by amplifiers, seemingly
hooked into them umbilically, pounding madsweat at their instruments, swaying on their precarious
platform suspended by a cable from invisible heights. He didn't know what they were playing, maybe
nobody did except the Savages, but it was update and gutlow.

Dazzled and deafened, Gavin let himself be buffeted, moved Brownian around hugespace, surrendering